Codex Desktop: Add chat-scoped notification focus mode

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jun 10, 2026 by Jordak

This was generated by AI during triage.

Summary

Add a notification setting for turn completion notifications that only alerts when the chat that produced the notification is not the currently focused chat.

Suggested option label:

Only when this chat is not focused

Current Behavior

Codex currently offers these turn completion notification options:

Never
Only when unfocused
Always

The existing Only when unfocused option appears to use app/window focus. If the Codex window is focused, background chat activity does not produce a notification, even when the user is looking at a different chat.

Requested Behavior

Add a chat-aware notification mode that considers which specific chat is currently active or visible.

When enabled:

If the currently focused chat finishes a turn, do not send a notification.
If any other chat finishes a turn while the user is looking at a different Codex chat, send a notification.
If the Codex app/window is unfocused, send notifications for completed turns as usual, since no specific chat is being actively watched.

Why This Matters

Codex often has multiple chats or agent tasks running at once. The current Only when unfocused setting is too coarse: it suppresses useful background-chat notifications just because the Codex window is active.

This makes it easy to miss completions from other chats while working in one active chat. A chat-scoped option would preserve the quiet behavior for the chat the user is already viewing, while still surfacing meaningful activity from other running chats.

Example Scenario

The user is viewing Chat A in Codex.
Chat B is running in the background.
Chat B finishes and posts a message.
Codex should notify the user, even though the Codex window is focused, because Chat B is not the focused chat.
If Chat A finishes while the user is still viewing Chat A, Codex should not notify.

Acceptance Criteria

The notification dropdown includes a new chat-scoped option.
Codex tracks the currently focused chat independently from app/window focus.
Background chat completions notify when a different chat is focused.
The focused chat's own completions do not notify while it is actively visible.
Existing notification modes continue to behave as they do today.
The behavior works across multiple open chats in the same Codex window.

Possible UX Copy

Dropdown option:

Only when this chat is not focused

Short description:

Alert me when another chat finishes while I am viewing this one.

Related But Not Duplicate

I searched existing openai/codex issues before filing. These are adjacent, but do not cover this specific request:

#27022 asks for separate completion notification controls for scheduled automations.
#22117 asks for separate notification controls for incomplete /goal turns.
#20817 asks for completed or attention-needing chats to be surfaced higher in the Desktop sidebar.
#25606 covers mobile remote-control state and missed attention states when the mobile app is backgrounded or on another thread.

This request is narrower: add a Desktop notification condition that treats the currently visible chat/thread as focused, so background chats can still notify even when the Codex window itself is focused.